hypocrisy punished, and that detestable bane of society, scandal, lashed with an unsparing hand. Where are there more profitable lessons to be found than in Joanna Baillie's Plays on the Passions, the very title of which speak their object? to show the necessity of self-government, and the danger of yielding to excess. I shall probably be told by ultra-dogmatists, that Count Basil commits suicide, and De Montfort murder: they do so; but these crimes are represented as the consequences of unbridled indulgence in particular passions, and are produced as examples to avoid and not to imitate. What reasonable argument can be raised against Miss Mitford's plays of Rienzi, Julian, Foscari, and Charles the First? And where are the disqualifications of Sir E. Bulwer's Lady of Lyons, and of Sergeant Talfourd's Ion and Athenian Captive? I shall probably be told, that in the Lady of Lyons the hero redeems himself from a youthful error, by achieving fame and fortune in war, and that war being an unchristian employment, "the aspect of the play on Christianity," as Dr. Styles says of Douglas, "is exceedingly dangerous."* And with respect to Ion and the Athenian Captive, it may be advanced, that the subjects being pagan ones, are altogether

* See Dr. Styles's Essay, p. 89, third Edition. I shall really feel obliged to Dr. Bennett, if he will explain to me what Dr. Styles means by an "aspect on Christianity," which I have tried in vain to comprehend.

unfit for Christian audiences. If these positions can be established, alas for literature! Above all, what moral or religious objection can be urged against the whole series of plays by Sheridan Knowles, on which the public have set their seal of admiration, and which reflect an equal honour on the character and the country of the writer? I am truly rejoiced at this opportunity of rendering my feeble tribute to the first of living dramatists, who combines the power, the truth, and energy of the early writers, divested entirely of those errors in taste, which blemish and deform their most striking passages. Knowles's delineations of female character, in particular, are finished with a grace and delicacy, which Shakspeare only can excel,* and entitle him to a laurel wreath, entwined by the fair fingers of the loveliest in the land. I have here named a few of the leading modern

* If I were to enter into any disquisition on the female characters of Shakspeare, the subject is too fascinating to be hastily dismissed, and my work would become more voluminous than suits its present purpose. Let me only refer my readers to one of the most elegant productions which has ever been given to the world, in homage of the immortal bard, I mean Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women, 2 vols. cr. 8vo. a book in itself sufficient to put down all the cavilling that has ever been uttered against the stage 'delineation of the softer sex. Let those who desire to form a correct estimate of the surpassing truth and feminine beauty of Shakspeare's heroines, peruse Mrs. Jameson's work, and their opinions formed on that will not be easily altered.

plays and authors, selected from the Stage as it now is; the great majority unnamed, resemble these in the character of their writings, however different in the degrees of their talent. The exceptions must be sought for on the other side. It is beyond hopelessness, to reason with men so thoroughly ascetic in their temperament, so totally sublimated in their ideas, and so determined to hold to their own views of right and wrong, as to deny that the authors I have mentioned are moral writers and Christian men, and their works productive more of good than evil. If it be argued that instruction is to emanate from the pulpit only, that serious matters are to be discussed no where else, and that it is unchristianlike to administer truth in any shape more palatable than the stern warnings of the preacher, the circle of literature will be narrowed indeed. By far the greater portion of what the world has hitherto considered valuable in the produce of human intellect, may at once be consigned to the flames as superfluous and prejudicial. Reasoners who build on this exclusive hypothesis, are genuine disciples of the Caliph Omar, who when questioned by his lieutenant Amrou, as to the disposal of the Alexandrian Library, replied in this enlightened dogma: "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Book of God,* they

*The Koran.

are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed."*

If the Theatre be a "mass of evil," its component parts must be of similar quality, and if we abolish the Stage, as a vicious institution, we must at the same time proscribe music, dancing, poetry, painting, sculpture, oratory, and history, of which it is compounded. We thus, "at one fell swoop," deprive society of nearly all that embellishes life, or softens manners, retaining little more than "the carpenter's rule and the Bible," which, according to the expanded views of the Barebones parliament, comprise "every thing that is necessary for the happiness or improvement of man." Such a consummation would reduce the world to one extensive monastery of La Trappe; but there is little danger of its being effected. If the greater portion of theatrical audiences were composed, as the enemies of the Stage contend, of "the idle, the profligate, and the vicious," they might be gained by reasoning which they could not under

*The books which composed the Alexandrian Library were employed to heat the baths, 4000 in number, and took six months in consuming. Bishop Horne's works, vol. i. p. 258. According to Gibbon, literature has suffered little by this holocaust, as the library chiefly consisted of the theological subtleties and endless controversies of the early Fathers. A valuable portion of the early collection of the Ptolemies was burned when Julius Cæsar set fire to his fleet for his own preservation.

stand; as where there is vice there is generally ignorance, and ignorance will often be frightened into the belief of that which knowledge sturdily rejects. The age of darkness is past, and fanatical opinions lose their force in the exact ratio that education advances. Amongst the supporters of the Theatre may be enumerated a large portion of the highest in rank and the most enlightened in intellect; men of all professions, who seek to relieve their minds from the tedium of abstruser studies by an occasional hour of elegant and classical recreation. Mixed up with the gayer vo tary of fashion, (who, though he may be idle, is not of necessity vicious or depraved,) we find the Judge, when wearied by the solemn duties of his office; the statesman, after an anxious debate; the student, fagged by hours of application; and the physician, worn by constant attendance at the couch of pain. Each and all of these, seek the welcome relaxation of the Theatre, to refresh their faculties by listening to the stirring energy of Shakspeare, the sparkling wit of Sheridan, or the thrilling melody of Rossini. And yet we are to be told that the classic temple of the Muses, where the arts combine their powers to delight and to instruct, is a foul and irreligious den, and that all who cross its threshold are infected by its loathsomeness: that virtue and innocence are lost when they enter within its walls, and that the